Unpredictability

            The chaos theory of unpredictability is an extension of the well-known Heisenburg uncertainty principle which states that:

where h is Plank's constant. Essentially, this equation implies that either the momentum of a particle, M_x, can be known with certainty, or its position, x, can be known with certainty, but not both together. This uncertainty is inherent in how we measure things, and apparently exists because every observer tends to influence, to some degree, what is being observed. This basic principle of uncertainty at the quantum level has been verified many times in the scientific community. Chaos theory extends this uncertainty principle to the macroscopic level when we consider complex systems which are sensitive to initial conditions. In chaos theory, this principle is called Prigogine's Uncertainty after the 1977 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine's principle says that as systems become more complex, a threshold of complexity will be reached such that the system will begin functioning in unpredictable directions; such a system will lose its initial conditions and these can never be reversed or recovered (Briggs & Peat, 1989; Kondepudi & Prigongine, 1998).

       The future of any complex system is unpredictable. All that we can ever know of the future is in terms of probabilities. The future of any complex system, and this includes the psyche, can only be known totally (i.e., with certainty) by its moment-to-moment expression in the present.

            Jung (1978) writes,  "Between the conscious and the unconscious there is a kind of "uncertainty relationship," because the observer is inseparable from the observed and always disturbs it by the act of observation" (p. 226). Here Jung applies the Heisenburg uncertainty principle to the psyche.